Some superb Warne Marsh on video

[sgcim]

4 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

Jim's  lengthy statement has within it a number of important points. While I agree, to some extent with much of what he says, his emphasis on masturbation / procreation seems to me, to miss some important ideas. Personal taste among jazz fans / listeners was left out.

Speaking only for myself, I have been listening seriously to jazz for numerous decades. During that long time span I have developed an affection for the playing of many many jazz musicians, and also for certain stylistic approaches to the music. When I listen to jazz either live or on recordings, the pleasure / enjoyment I get depends on a variety of factors, but procreation and musical mastubutation, are not in my mind. The ability of the musicians to play within styles I find appealing, the choice of notes, the technical competence, the ability to play interesting solos, the  ability to swing, and  the tunes played, are main factors in what matters.

To use an example, the above means that I can enjoy the tenor playing of Bud Freeman, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Warne Marsh, Hank Mobley,  Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Johnny Griffin, James Moody, Sal Nistico , Scott Hamilton, Eric Alexander, and Grant Stewart, to list just some of the tenor players I  enjoy. In the history of jazz, some of these players are of major importance, while others not so much. But that is not what counts for me at the moment I am listening to the playing of either Coleman Hawkins of Eric Alexander.

 

 

Well said! That kind of sums up Chekhov's famous quote, "There is nothing new in the arts except talent".

[sgcim]

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

No, Ted Brown was not at Warne's exalted level, but I don't buy the implicit dis in the above comparison. Ted, within the ambience that itself formed Warne and within the ambience of Warne's influence as well, was a highly creative and imaginative and player. 

Was Sonny Stitt at the same level of creativity and imagination as Bird? No. Was Stiit at his best highly creative and imaginative? Yes.

And Mark Turner and Ted are two quite different sorts of players -- in terms of historical formation at the least.

I agree with that, but I don't hear Turner's claim that Marsh is his greatest influence.

[JSngry]

So, what, now we're fetishizing talent?

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

No, Ted Brown was not at Warne's exalted level, but I don't buy the implicit dis in the above comparison. Ted, within the ambience that itself formed Warne and within the ambience of Warne's influence as well, was a highly creative and imaginative player. 

Was Sonny Stitt at the same level of creativity and imagination as Bird? No. Was Stiit at his best highly creative and imaginative? Yes.

And Mark Turner and Ted are two quite different sorts of players -- in terms of historical formation at the least.

I have no real use for Mark Turner (other than a Generic Modern Mainstream Jazz Ear Candy), and was surprised, to say the least, when all the buzz about him being so influenced by Warne came out. Who knew?

So, let's trace Marsh to Ted Brwon to Lenny Popkin to, who's that guy that made the totally gonzo free record, Richard Tabenick.

And let's trace Bird to Stitt to Phil Woods to Richie Cole to...god that's where I kind of stop.

There's no diminution of "talent", or, for each individual's taste, "enjoyment", but geez if "originality" can be fetishized (and it certainly can), then what about the fetishization of "tradition", of doing/liking something because it fits one's own comfort zone of what )fill in the blank type of music) "should sound like". That's as good a way as any to try to freeze time, which I think physics tell us is just not possible.

And again, on an individual level, that's fine. But reality's a bitch, and no matter how long you try and postpone its reckoning,...whoop there it is.

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, sgcim said:

I agree with that, but I don't hear Turner's claim that Marsh is his greatest influence.

Not sure what you mean by "don't hear"? You don't hear me saying that or you don't understand, given the nature of Turner's playing, why Turner himself has made that claim? I haven't mentioned it because given Turner's rather surface-y relationship to Marsh, I don't think it matters much. Turner can claim all he wants, but he's still not that interesting a  player IMO.

 

BTW, Turner in recent times has adopted a seemingly self-created mode of almost a-melodic grayness that is enough to induce significant depressive symptoms (at least that was the  effect on me, when I heard his band with Avishia Cohen in concert about a year ago).

[Guy Berger]

I like Mark Turner's playing. 

[Peter Friedman]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

I have no real use for Mark Turner (other than a Generic Modern Mainstream Jazz Ear Candy), and was surprised, to say the least, when all the buzz about him being so influenced by Warne came out. Who knew?

So, let's trace Marsh to Ted Brwon to Lenny Popkin to, who's that guy that made the totally gonzo free record, Richard Tabenick.

And let's trace Bird to Stitt to Phil Woods to Richie Cole to...god that's where I kind of stop.

There's no diminution of "talent", or, for each individual's taste, "enjoyment", but geez if "originality" can be fetishized (and it certainly can), then what about the fetishization of "tradition", of doing/liking something because it fits one's own comfort zone of what )fill in the blank type of music) "should sound like". That's as good a way as any to try to freeze time, which I think physics tell us is just not possible.

And again, on an individual level, that's fine. But reality's a bitch, and no matter how long you try and postpone its reckoning,...whoop there it is.

I 'm glad you added that final paragraph. Yes the music (jazz, classical, pop,rock. whatever) will continue to change in one way or another. But for some   listeners, yes, we have developed a comfort zone, and the music that is within that comfort zone is richly rewarding to us. That comfort zone may be large, or it may be small, and it may be different for each listener. Each individual has to make their own choice in this area.

 

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, Guy Berger said:

I like Mark Turner's playing. 

Some early Turner I found attractively clever. It was the music produced by this latter-day Turner band that almost made me want to slit my wrists.

That Turner band with another trumpet player, Jason Palmer. Re: the chuggng greyness of the writing and the solo work, I'm reminded of what a musician-friend once said of Toshiko: "A composer-arranger who used to play in her band quipped that 'her writing sounds like they switched the fourth tenor and baritone books and didn’t tell anybody.'"

 

[sgcim]

3 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

I 'm glad you added that final paragraph. Yes the music (jazz, classical, pop,rock. whatever) will continue to change in one way or another. But for some   listeners, yes, we have developed a comfort zone, and the music that is within that comfort zone is richly rewarding to us. That comfort zone may be large, or it may be small, and it may be different for each listener. Each individual has to make their own choice in this area.

 

 

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Not sure what you mean by "don't hear"? You don't hear me saying that or you don't understand, given the nature of Turner's playing, why Turner himself has made that claim? I haven't mentioned it because given Turner's rather surface-y relationship to Marsh, I don't think it matters much. Turner can claim all he wants, but he's still not that interesting a  player IMO.

 

BTW, Turner in recent times has adopted a seemingly self-created mode of almost a-melodic grayness that is enough to induce significant depressive symptoms (at least that was the  effect on me, when I heard his band with Avishia Cohen in concert about a year ago).

Yea, I meant I didn't hear Marsh in Turner's playing.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Re: the chuggng greyness of the writing and the solo work, I'm reminded of what a musician-friend once said of Toshiko: "A composer-arranger who used to play in her band quipped that 'her writing sounds like they switched the fourth tenor and baritone books and didn’t tell anybody.'"

I've often heard people (especially musicians) complain that Toshiko "over-writes". When I gave a Monday Michiru record to a friend to check out, he came back with, yeah, it's really interesting, but it sure is busy...oh well, she comes by it honestly!

I felt that way myself about Toshiko until getting into Monday (who apparently felt the draft when trying to get an American record deal while positing her music as "soul" (lower case l), uh-uh, soul is a black word, "they" said, and you are not black...end of discussion, apparently), how there were so many influences in the mix, but not any real imitations, and then I got to wondering if I would hear Toshikio's writing the same way if I stopped hearing what I though it was "supposed" to sound like. I'm not going to say that a light bulb went off all at once, but the "greyness" did get a lot lighter. She's not black, she's not male, and she's not American, nor did she grow up in America...the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why anybody expert her to sound like she was/had/etc.And yet, she found a real, unique "jazz voice", and maybe, just ramble-thinking here, maybe that's why that West Coast band was the perfect vehicle for her writing, none(?) of them hit the "jazz trifecta" of at once being American Black Males, although a lot of them did have extensive studio experience, which otoneh, yeah, personality usually not desired, but ototherh, interpretational capacity very much a job prerequisite, so....right band, right writer, I have every confidence that that music sounds EXACTLY the way it was supposed to sound, so...not Tohshiko's fault if I can't hear it. I get it more a lot more now than I did then, that's for sure, although, as fine a musician as Lew Tabackin is (especially on flute), it's never a question of if I will become unable to engage further in his train of thought, but when.

As far as that pertains to Warne, wasn't it at the Warne/Tabackin date that Warne supposedly got vocal with Tabackin about Tabackin playing "wrong" because he played "black"? Something like that? Maybe Tabackin was taken aback(in) thinking that it was racist, but no, not that at all. By all accounts, Warne had the highest integrity about having a truly individual voice, and appears to have been very...extreme (I suppose some might call it a "fetish" ) about what that meant. Both him and Lee...they loved Bird, they loved "Black Jazz", but they loved it so much as to not feel right about claiming the flavor/core voice of it for something they could appropriate. That takes guts, then, especially.

Me, I get it, but I'm not hardcore about it, because this is still a racist society, it's also a more fully segregated one than it ever has been (and with the accordingly mixed (pun intended) results). But if you want to talk about people of an earlier American time, "fetishizing originality"...that's a loaded phrase too often used without understanding - by any person/ideology -  just how deep the concept of "original" can go. Cheap talk, cheap understanding, just cheap, period.

I'm tired of cheapness. Inexpensive, I like. Cheapness...that's the road to extinction, with any number of stops at any number of degrees of volunteered slavery along the way.

 

[Larry Kart]

I don't think Toshiko's problems as a writer (if she does have such problems -- as a fairly casual listener to her work, my sense is that she does) have anything to do with blackness or lack of same. As a composer-arranger-bandleader friend put it:

'Her biggest problem is lack of basic craft knowledge with voicings.  She doesn’t know how to voice chords so that they get a “buzz” in them. These deficiencies are less apparent in her Japanese-inspired pieces like “Sumie.”  Her more conventional jazz pieces, though, are blah.  I don’t know any composer-arranger of distinction who is a fan of hers.  Though her bands did very well what she asked of them --proving that you CAN polish a turd.'

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I don't think Toshiko's problems as a writer (if she does have such problems -- as a fairly casual listener to her work, my sense is that she does) have anything to do with blackness or lack of same. As a composer-arranger-bandleader friend put it:

'Her biggest problem is lack of basic craft knowledge with voicings.  She doesn’t know how to voice chords so that they get a “buzz” in them. These deficiencies are less apparent in her Japanese-inspired pieces like “Sumie.”  Her more conventional jazz pieces, though, are blah.  I don’t know any composer-arranger of distinction who is a fan of hers.  Though her bands did very well what she asked of them --proving that you CAN polish a turd.'

There was a time I would have LOL-ed at that and chuckled at how sharp it was. Clever boy!

But now I just gotta ask, I don't know what that means...is she supposed to make this listener tingle, like a blow job or something? and, what, is this listener expecting less of a buzz from "Japanese-inspired pieces" than from "more conventional jazz pieces"? Those are the boundaries of expectations?

And who are these composers-arrangers "of distinction? Bob Brookmeyer? Elliot Carter? H.P. Barnum?

Polishing a turd, yeah. That's cheap. I mean, I still don't hear all of it all the time, but "polishing a turd"....I don't think so. Defies physics.

I mean, what the fuck does any of that mean, and why should I believe it?

Cheapness, total subjectivity with an added does of meanness, the knife used to convince you that it's fact, not opinion, and to avert the glance away from looking at "where does THAT come from?", wholly informed by what it knows and nothing else. Another guy(?) reacting to what they think they should be getting out of life but aren't, like it's life's fault that life doesn't get that life is there to please them, that their expectations are what defines life.

There are not "problems" with Toshiko's writing, unless you want to call speaking in a voice that is not readily and/or widely heard as she hears it is a "problem", and to that all I can say is "tough shit". I don't consider it her fault that I don't always hear it, because, having been involved in the creation of a good many number of them, lo and behold, I am pretty good at detecting turds, musical or otherwise.

All right, oh yeah, uh-huh.

[Larry Kart]

What it means, as I understand it, is that the lines in Toshiko's charts typically have (and are conceived in terms of) horizontal, linear meaning, but when it comes to vertical harmonic and  timbral activity/meaning, while there's nothing overtly "wrong" going on in that realm, there's not much happening there that sounds meaningfully right (i.e. no "buzz") because, so my musician friend contends, of her "lack of basic craft knowledge with voicings." In fact, years before my friend volunteered this judgment, I heard the same thing quite dramatically while reviewing a mid-1980s performance by Toshiko's band at Rick's Cafe Americain in Chicago. Her pieces chugged along horizontally without any clashing of lines, but the lines never seemed to interact, rub against each other if you will, even acknowledge musically that the other lines in the piece existed. What made this particularly striking was that there were two or so pieces in the book by band member Frank Wess, and the difference along the aforementioned lines (so to speak) between his writing and the leader's was day and night. As it happens, I said just that in my review, which led to something a bit odd that I may have mentioned here before -- a postcard arrived later in the week from none other than Bill Russo, whom I'd never met, saying that I'd gotten things just right. Not that Russo's musical judgment there is the final word, anymore than mine was, but I found it interesting that he felt compelled to weigh in as he did.

[sgcim]

In one big band I play in, we always start our concerts with Toshiko's 'tuning' blues chart. It just goes on and on, chorus after chorus.

There's nothing wrong with it, but it just feels like it goes on and on, no transitions, no interludes, no contrasts, just on and on till the end...

[JSngry]

10 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

What it means, as I understand it, is that the lines in Toshiko's charts typically have (and are conceived in terms of) horizontal, linear meaning, but when it comes to vertical harmonic and  timbral activity/meaning, while there's nothing overtly "wrong" going on in that realm, there's not much happening there that sounds meaningfully right (i.e. no "buzz") because, so my musician friend contends, of her "lack of basic craft knowledge with voicings." In fact, years before my friend volunteered this judgment, I heard the same thing quite dramatically while reviewing a mid-1980s performance by Toshiko's band at Rick's Cafe Americain in Chicago. Her pieces chugged along horizontally without any clashing of lines, but the lines never seemed to interact, rub against each other if you will, even acknowledge musically that the other lines in the piece existed. What made this particularly striking was that there were two or so pieces in the book by band member Frank Wess, and the difference along the aforementioned lines (so to speak) between his writing and the leader's was day and night. As it happens, I said just that in my review, which led to something a bit odd that I may have mentioned here before -- a postcard arrived later in the week from none other than Bill Russo, whom I'd never met, saying that I'd gotten things just right. Not that Russo's musical judgment there is the final word, anymore than mine was, but I found it interesting that he felt compelled to weigh in as he did.

Again, I'm not really sure that what Toshko is going to want to hear a big band the way that Frank Wess or Bill Russo would.

What I don't get is this notion of that being a "problem" or it being "wrong", or in that repressed adolescent choice of words, it being "a turd". Sounds to me like she knows what she wants, knows what she's doing to get what she wants, has been doing this for long enough so that if she wanted something NOT like this, she'd have made changes, but hasn't, so...not a problem, not wrong, not a turd. Just different, and obviously not looking to be anything other than what it is.

Is it possible then, to hear what it IS rather than what it ISN'T? I've had some luck like that. Some. But fuck it, the world is full of music. You can't get to all of it, and that which you can get to, you'll not like all of it, even some of the good stuff, you just can't. But I do think you can figure out the difference between "wrong" and "different"/

[Larry Kart]

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

Again, I'm not really sure that what Toshko is going to want to hear a big band the way that Frank Wess or Bill Russo would.

What I don't get is this notion of that being a "problem" or it being "wrong", or in that repressed adolescent choice of words, it being "a turd". Sounds to me like she knows what she wants, knows what she's doing to get what she wants, has been doing this for long enough so that if she wanted something NOT like this, she'd have made changes, but hasn't, so...not a problem, not wrong, not a turd. Just different, and obviously not looking to be anything other than what it is.

Is it possible then, to hear what it IS rather than what it ISN'T? I've had some luck like that. Some. But fuck it, the world is full of music. You can't get to all of it, and that which you can get to, you'll not like all of it, even some of the good stuff, you just can't. But I do think you can figure out the difference between "wrong" and "different"/

As I hope you know, in the more than sixty years I've been listening I've found myself open to all kinds of music and to the ways those kinds of music work. and to all the various ways music can work in general-- from Jelly Roll Morton and Ellington to Ornette and Evan Parker, from Gesualdo to Chopin to Brahms and Morton Feldman , from Balinese gamelans to Indian ragas to Retimbeka (sp?) to Bobby Blue Bland and Clarence Ashley-- and  to all (or many) points in between. And in the course of all that listening, I've found that there's one basic principle that applies across the board, one that sounds as though it would have to be totally subjective (and it is to some  degree) but finally (or so I think) is not totally so -- one that with a fair degree of honest investigation, turns out to have a reasonably objective basis. That principle? Interesting versus boring. And before you scream or cry foul, let me try to explain. Interesting, of course,  probably needs no explanation -- unless and until I begin to go on about the aesthetic  joys of (to borrow a line from Le Roi Jones, when he still wrote under that name) a guy who can whistle with peas in his mouth. But a judgment of boring does call for some support.

Now boring can simply mean, "I don't get it" -- as in "I don't get what's going on," and/or  "I don't get what's intended." And any such judgment has to be dismissed, until and if one comes to know what's going on and what's intended. Now there are of course kinds of music or particular works that -- partly through design in some instances; partly, in others, in all innocence -- are going to defeat or escape the nets of attentiveness of many even quite-open-to-experience listeners: say, OTOH a four-hour Feldman string quartet or Mompou's Music Callada (sp?); or on the other a chamber work by Fernyhough or Lachenmann: the former two because  (Feldman) what happens over much time seems so minimal or (in smaller units of time) so darn obvious and simple (Mpmpou) as to be near meaningless; the latter two because the events of the music are so dense and abrupt that they seem near impossible to take in/sort out (Fernyhough) or the events also involve the extreme deformation/exacerbation of the sounds of the instruments (Lachenmann). OK, when one encounters music of these sorts (and there are other analogous sorts -- in jazz  is Cecil in excelsis close to one such?), it's pretty clear pretty soon, or even right away, that (if you will) some element of "challenge" to the way music previously has been made and heard is involved -- even in the case of Mompou, who may for the most part be the utterly simple soul he seemed or pretended to be (but Satie?).

Back to Toshiko now -- I tried to explain why I found her music to be fairly boring: because typically it is conceived in terms of) horizontal, linear meaning, but when it comes to vertical harmonic and  timbral activity/meaning, while there's nothing overtly "wrong" going on in that realm, there's not much happening there that sounds meaningfully right; thus,  while her pieces chug along horizontally without any clashing of lines, these lines never seem to interact, rub against each other if you will, even acknowledge musically that the other lines in the piece exist. And remember BTW that were taking about pieces that are conceived for a large jazz ensemble of conventional makeup (reed and brass choirs, rhythm section), not, say, for a single' or two-horn combo where a wholly or essentially linear approach might make good sense. Now it might be claimed that either I've inaccurately described what Toshiko does, or that she's also doing other things, musically important things, that I either hear but don't get (i.e. understand) or just fail to hear at all. Or is it, along those lines, that there's some musically meaningful "challenge" (see above) to the way music previously has been made and heard  that is involved in Toshiko's writing and that, again, I either don't get that or more or less airily, arrogantly reject it?

OK, Jim, you or someone else tell me what virtues -- subtle and under wraps or plain to all ears that are able and willing to hear -- I'm missing in Toshiko's writing. Further, recall FWIW that Frank Wess' pieces, played on the same night by Toshiko's own band, clearly seemed to this not inexperienced listener to possess the very qualities that her writing seemed to lack. Likewise, up to a point, there's what sgcim said in a post above of Toshiko's "tuning blues" chart: " It just goes on and on, chorus after chorus....There's nothing wrong with it, but it just feels like it goes on and on, no transitions, no interludes, no contrasts, just on and on till the end." 

Is Toshiko, then, some sort of inside-out innovator, a kind of Morton Feldman of jazz who has realized that pieces that just go "on and on" can have, by that token, a novel and potent meaning all their own? Or is it that, as my veteran composer-arranger-bandleader friend says, Toshiko lacks "basic craft knowledge with voicings." (Surely you, as a musician yourself, know to what he referring to there.)

Now I am more than a little wary of such statements  about "basic craft knowledge" -- not only because they smell of what I think of as "the jazz locker room of self-designated/ self-congratulatory insiders" but also because such judgments ofgten have proved to be utterly inadequate (if not just plain false) in relation to novel and crucially important developments in the music: e.g. Ornette, to pick the most obvious example. But that doesn't mean that in certain areas of the music there is not "basic craft knowledge" that does apply, until and unless.... The question, for me, is whether Toshiko is such an "until and unless" figure. Could be, but I sure don't hear it.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

OK, Jim, you or someone else tell me what virtues -- subtle and under wraps or plain to all ears that are able and willing to hear -- I'm missing in Toshiko's writing.

I don't know that you're "missing" anything. All I know is that I went years without really liking/hearing damn near any of, and then started over trying to be as objective as I could, and I found that some of it I "got" in a way that I hadn't heard before, the whole "horizontal" thing fell into place for me... sometimes. And yeah, sometimes it was/is pretty boring. If I was to find a fault with what I don't like, it's form/developement. That "it just goes on and on, nothing wrong with it, it just goes on and on" thing, now THAT I get.

To use the ultimate copout yet universal truth, it is what it is .And "it"...if you hear it, I guess it's there, and I guess if you don't it's not. Like who was it said about late Lester Young, there is no good late Lester Young, there is no bad late Lester Young, the is just late Lester Young.

And about the matter of a lack of  "basic craft knowledge"...you can't seriously believe that a musician this skilled, this experienced, this schooled, has, after all these years, not been able to hear their own music played back at them and not be able to tell what they want to hear vs what they don't want to hear? C'mon man, Lew Tabackin knows big band playing/writing, and knew it before this particular big band. I've heard enough stories about Lew Tabackin being a very, very critical perfectionist about everything musical to have no doubt whatsoever that if he thought his wife's writing was not what it was supposed/needed to be, he'd have stopped it dead in its tracks and not let it get back up until it had been made right.

So yeah, she has an ear/vision that seems often enough to slip through some cracks in my brain. There are plenty of cracks there to be slipped through! But an accusation of incompetence/ignorance/whatever, that's just all kinds of wrong. I know she had a hard time getting players to play her charts in the beginning precisely because players would react like, yeah, ok, that shit's fucked up. So either she's an incredibly stubborn and deaf, or else she knows how she wants her shit to sound, period, "right" or "wrong"..

Stubborn, that I have no problem believing. But deaf? Ain't no way.

[Larry Kart]

"C'mon man, Lew Tabackin knows big band playing/writing, and knew it before this particular big band. I've heard enough stories about Lew Tabackin being a very, verycritical perfectionist about everything musical to have no doubt whatsoever that if he thought his wife's writing was not what it was supposed/needed to be, he'd have stopped it dead in its tracks and not let it get back up until it had been made right."

 

You certainly know a lot about music, but I think you may be forgetting some things about how wives and husbands can interact.  Let's go ask Charlie Mariano.

[JSngry]

Uh, yeah. And let's ask his children (of whom there are several) about that whole "interaction" thing.

What are you saying, that Toshiko was an inferior player who Mariano just had along for the, uh..."ride"? And that Lew Tabackin has been doing the same thing for, what,  almost 50 years?

Nasty, if so. Just nasty.